The Torch

by Peter Twohig

  Which brings me to Mrs Kavanagh. She had been put away just because she was blind — in a blind people’s home. It made me wonder about Mr Sax, down at Sax’s shop, where Dad bought my red multipurpose pocketknife. Mr Sax was so shortsighted that he had to have a shop assistant, and was really only there to lock up and chat to the customers, whom he could hardly see, in spite of his glasses being as thick as ashtrays. The afternoon I had bought my compass he had asked me if I was going to go exploring in Darkest Africa. I’m sure he had me mixed up with Dr Livingstone, or someone like that. I mean, I was wearing a kid’s hat with Olympic pins stuck all over it. It would only be a matter of time before the blokes from the blind people’s home came along to drag him away, kicking and screaming, to be locked up.

  I wondered what it would be like to be tortured, if you couldn’t see what was going to happen to you. You’d be thinking what a nice voice your torturer had, then Zap!, he’d be filling your body (that’s the softest part of you) with electricity, and making you scream your head off, like in O.S.S., and wish some British secret agent would turn up and kill you.

  I needed to track down Mrs K, to find out if she knew any places Flame Boy might be holed up, and also to see how she felt about the Wodonga plan. I hadn’t been able to get Aunty Daffy alone, but I got the impression that she had struck out with Flame Boy’s mum, which didn’t surprise me, as they didn’t get on. I thought I might have more success for two reasons: we had occasionally shared the same box of corn flakes, and she had taken to Zac, who was going to be my secret weapon. Despite the fact that the only times I had seen Mrs K she had been either legless or close to it, and I knew she had a violent streak in her, something told me Flame Boy would be better off with her and Lt Daffy DSO than with a bloke who was wanted by more people than the pound note. But where was Mrs K holing up? I decided to ask Mrs Radion for information, as she was a bit like Switzerland during the war. Also, she had proved to be something of an Albert Einstein when it came to Olympic torches.

  The newspaper said that the factory fire had been up over in Abbotsford, at the top of Church Street. I had to see it, and comb the spot for clues, so I thought I’d combine two missions by going to the Richmond Baths as well, it being a scorcher that day. I put my bathers and a towel into my bag, and left through the back gate. Then it was down Kipling Lane, which was cool and shady, to Raffi’s house. I told Zac to stay, and went in.

  ‘Hello everyone.’ I gave all present the Blayney Smile.

  ‘Ah, you’re just in time to taste something,’ said Mrs Radion. ‘You must have a nose like a dog.’

  Actually I had smelt something delicious all the way out in Dress Circle Lane, and I knew instinctively, the way boys know which girls will probably make ugly faces at them and which ones won’t (it’s usually the pretty ones who do), that it was Mrs R who was doing the cooking.

  ‘I have, Mrs Radion, and so has my dog.’ Zac was at the flyscreen door, huffing and puffing like a steam engine.

  ‘Well, don’t let him in. I’m not letting a Labrador get anywhere near my cooking.’

  She was making something with jam inside it. Raffi was already having a taste, and I was given a spoon.

  ‘It’s terrific, Mrs Radion. I’ve never tasted that before.’

  ‘You must have tasted apricot jam before.’

  ‘Only AJC.’

  ‘Let me tell you, AJC would kill to get their hands on this recipe. But it’s a family secret.’

  The way she was talking made me wonder if she would be interested in joining the Olympians. She could be our cook. But then, I didn’t want to rub Mrs Sanderson up the wrong way — the thought made me shiver.

  ‘They’d only put it in a tin,’ said Raffi.

  ‘Mrs Radion, I wanted to ask you something about blind people.’

  She did a whole lot of kitcheny things while she was talking — Mum would have been taking notes.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Why do they put blind people in homes?’

  ‘I didn’t know they did. Are you sure?’

  ‘We know a blind lady, and she was put in a home for blind people.’

  ‘Maybe she had no place to stay. A blind person’s home would be a nice, safe place to live. There’d be people to take care of you.’

  ‘But once she was there, she’d be a prisoner for life.’ I was thinking of what Granddad had said about the loony bin.

  ‘What? No, she wouldn’t be a prisoner at all.’

  ‘But I thought a home was like a prison.’

  ‘Course not. There are different types of homes.’

  ‘Do you know where the blind people’s home is?’

  ‘No, but we can find out. It’ll be in the phone book. Why don’t you have a look?’

  Now this was something I’d never done, so I got the book from the living room and brought it back, while Mrs Radion explained how to look up ‘Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind’.

  I got out my Spirax notebook and wrote down the address. It was in Prahran, not far from the South Melbourne footy ground.

  ‘Are you going to visit her?’

  ‘Yeah. Thought I’d drop in and say hello.’

  But straight away I realised that when she said ‘you’ she meant ‘you and your mum’.

  ‘That’s too far to go by yourself. You’d better ask your mother to take you.’

  ‘Good idea, Mrs Radion.’

  It was one of those good ideas that was never going to happen, like free ice-cream for any kid who was wearing a South Melbourne footy jumper.

  Then I had some Olympian business to attend to with Raffi. We went down to his bedroom.

  ‘I’m on a secret mission.’

  ‘Where’ya off to?’

  ‘The baths. Comin’?’

  ‘Too right.’

  I lowered my voice so his mum wouldn’t hear. ‘But first I’m going to search for clues at the shoe factory that burnt down last night. Interested?’

  ‘Yeah, you bet. What kinda clues?’

  ‘Won’t know till I find ’em.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  And that just about wrapped it up. We spent the trip up Church Street leaning out of the tram and spitting on cars.

  The shoe factory turned out to be right next door to the Abbotsford Brewery, which, luckily, had been saved. But the shoe factory had been wrecked, partly by the fire and partly by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, cheesed off at having been called to two big fires at once, at opposite ends of Richmond, which Blind Freddy could see was no coincidence. They would have been as mad as snakes to discover that a brewery was in danger, when they had sent most of their trucks to a bloody lumberyard.

  There was still one fire engine there, just in case, but any kid could have told them that fire was out for the count. It wasn’t long before we got sick of the place, and of being told to bugger off by the firemen, so we went for a wander around the scene of the crime.

  Me, I began by looking up, as it is an established fact that a firebug likes to watch the fruit of his labour from a high place, like a tower or a church. There were none of these, but there were a couple of empty factories across the road — ghost factories. So off we went to the nearest one. The place was filled with broken glass and rubbish, but we walked up the stairs until we were on the top floor and went over to the corner windows. It occurred to my superdetective mind that we were probably standing in the perfect place to watch that shoe factory bite the dust, though I said nothing to Raffi, who was just enjoying the day out.

  After a minute, Raffi said to me, ‘I think we better go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there’s a bloke watching us.’

  He pointed, and I looked out and across to the building next door and saw him watching us through a dirty window. He was looking straight at us, and he looked strange in a familiar way, as if he was going to laugh, though he wasn’t. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  Down on the street, I ran, with Raffi beside me. We ra
n all the way to the nearest tram stop at Victoria Street, where we leant on each other, exhausted, looking back towards the brewery, half expecting to see the bloke — he had Kavanagh written all over him — running like hell after us. But the firebugs were not travelling by tram that day. After a few minutes, Raffi had forgotten all about the bloke, but I had a lot on my mind. I was still thinking hard when the Prahran tram arrived. I was just about to hop up when Raffi held me back. The clippie, who looked like Alan Hale Jr in a skirt, said, ‘Well, are you getting on or not?’

  ‘He can’t get up by himself,’ said Raffi, sounding like he was about to burst into tears.

  ‘He’s got two arms and two legs, hasn’t he?’ said the homely clippie.

  ‘He’s had polio,’ said Raffi. ‘We need a hand getting up.’

  ‘Here, you poor love,’ said Alan Hale Jr, hopping down a step and hefting me onto the tram.

  ‘Where you off to?’ she said, once we were settled in.

  ‘The baths. How much?’ said Raffi.

  ‘Now, you save your money for some lollies, dear,’ she said.

  When we got to the baths, the clippie climbed down and reached two big pudgy hands up to me to lift me down again. Then, with a wave, like Hopalong Cassidy, she disappeared out of our lives.

  We waved back, and silently crossed to the cool of the baths entrance. I was speechless with admiration at Raffi, who had invented a new way to have fun with a clippie, one that none of the Commandos had ever used.

  ‘That was a great trick, that polio thing.’

  ‘I used to do it with my cousin Chrissie.’

  ‘Wow! Girls don’t usually like tricks.’

  ‘It wasn’t a trick.’

  I had a good swim with Raffi that day, and the funny part was that apart from the way he couldn’t read my mind, and didn’t know any of my funny voices and jokes, he was just like Tom. He swam the same way as Tom, which was dog-paddle; he sucked his ice-block the same way as Tom, which was starting at the corners; and he even spat water the same way as Tom.

  Raffi ducked me when I wasn’t looking, and when I came up he said, ‘You know how we’re in a gang?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I’m in a gang too. It’s called the Cobras. Want to be in it?’

  ‘Is there a kid called Matthew Foster in it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then okay.’

  It was only a quick walk from the Richmond Baths to Granddad’s house, so I thought I’d take Raffi home and show him where I lived a lot of the time. But just as I reached Granddad’s corner, Dad appeared in front of us on his motorbike, and I knew he had been visiting Mum, especially as he was looking like he’d just seen South get done like a dinner by Carlton, and was still in shock. I wasn’t surprised, as all his meetings with Mum over the past few months had ended badly, even Christmas Day, which was the one day I thought things might work out, even though I knew he was never coming home again. I had been wrong, just as I had been wrong about South’s chances last season, and about Josephine Thompson wanting to marry me, and about Peanut Hobson’s mum letting him join the Commandos (she told Mrs Carruthers it was because the Blayney twins were in it, but after I wasn’t a twin anymore, she still didn’t change her mind). Also, I had been wrong in thinking that Happy New Year meant that I would not miss Tom anymore.

  But on closer inspection, I could see that Dad was not just in shock, but looked as though he was badly in need of a gas oven to shove his head into. He had finally found out what was for the rest of us old news.

  He put his feet on the road and looked at us; I wasn’t even sure if he recognised me. He looked at Raffi, then at me, then let his breath out for the first time. He was revving the engine a little, but waiting, so I hopped on the Triumph behind him, and nodded to Raffi, who hopped on behind me. As usual, I was hanging on to Dad like grim death — it was always me in front of Tom — while Raffi seemed at home squished up behind me, holding on to my T-shirt lightly, as if he had been born on a motorbike.

  We went down Church Street without getting into top gear, which told me that Dad was miles away, and eventually turned into Mrs Bentley’s street.

  When we got off the bike, I had a very strange feeling, like the one I got just before I collapsed from food poisoning last year. It was a feeling that something bad was about to happen, but I couldn’t as yet point to a part of me and say: ‘It’s all going to happen in there.’

  When we got inside, Mrs Bentley was happy to see me, and gave me the big hello, like Stanley gave to Livingstone in the jungle. When she copped an eyeful of Raffi, she looked at me, then at Dad, then back at Raffi.

  ‘Well, and who’s this?’ she said.

  I opened my mouth to tell her.

  ‘This is Raffi,’ said Dad.

  27 Mrs Bentley chucks a wobbly

  The trouble with grown-ups is that they are not as predictable as you’d like them to be. Take Uncle Maury. He had not done anything to Dad; in fact I liked him a lot. He had a car, a grey Hillman Minx, though I think it belonged to his girlfriend, Virginia, and he had been to America, which is where he learnt to speak American. You would therefore think that everyone would love him; I know Mum did. But not Dad.

  One night, when he was half stung, Dad went troppo and bashed him up, although Uncle Maury, who was not a drinking man, got in some lovely scoring shots himself before going down for the count. Granddad, who was there, told me later that Dad only won that fight because he started off by kneeing Uncle Maury in the pills, which would have got him disqualified in a professional match. Otherwise, said Granddad, Uncle Maury would have wiped the floor with him, having the advantages of height, reach, weight, youth, sobriety and good looks, which can take a man a long way. They took Uncle Maury to Tasmania.

  Dad, who was just limbering up, then decided to give Mum a little tap as well, but Granddad, who had just been a casual observer up to that point, stepped in and had a quiet word in Dad’s shell-like, and Dad decided to quit while he was ahead, because Mum was Granddad’s little girl, and if he had wanted to, he could have done to Dad what he did to Leonard Jenkins in his fighting days. And he was still famous for that fight.

  I mentioned this incident because even though it took place on a Saturday, which is the main day of the week for unexpected things to happen in Richmond, I had not been expecting it. And now it was a Saturday again, and here I was, not expecting anything out of the ordinary to happen all over again, and it did. In fact, the unexpected stuff started as soon as we turned up at Mrs Bentley’s place. Dad was full of surprises.

  ‘Hey, Dad, how did you know his name was Raffi?’

  ‘It isn’t, is it? Just had a guess.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Dad was a regular magician. I knew it was a trick, but I didn’t know how it was done, and Dad had told me many times that he would never reveal any of his tricks.

  ‘No really, Dad, come on.’

  ‘Sorry, can’t tell.’

  Meanwhile, Mrs Bentley, who was thirty times as shocked as the rest of us, just made a face as if she was looking at a cold sore in the mirror, and said nothing.

  I knew that was one of the adult signs for ‘tell me all about it later’ — I didn’t just get off the boat.

  Raffi, meanwhile, was following all this with a funny look on his face.

  ‘Bet you can’t guess my last name,’ he said.

  ‘Radion.’

  ‘Dad, how did you know?’

  ‘I knew his old man.’

  I wanted to ask Dad what had happened to him, as Raffi never mentioned him, but Raffi jumped in.

  ‘He’s working up at the Snowy.’

  ‘Last I heard,’ said Dad.

  There was a silence, and I could tell that Dad wished he’d never brought us over, let alone said he knew who Raffi was. Dad didn’t talk much, but when he did, he was always odds on to put his foot in it.

  ‘So thoughtful of you to bring the boys, Bill,’ said Mrs Bentl
ey in a serious voice. ‘Why don’t we go down for some afternoon tea?

  ‘So did you have that little chat?’ asked Mrs B while she was rustling up some grub for us.

  Dad just nodded — that was normal.

  ‘And what did she want this time?’

  Dad looked at us. ‘Boys, why don’t you take your drinks outside?’

  We picked everything up and headed outside to talk to Monty the galah.

  For a moment there was nothing, then the sound of raised voices, followed by the smashing of plates in the sink, which was just what I think Mum would have done if she had found out that it was Dad’s friend who was pregnant. I thought, therefore, that on the whole it was a fair response.

  Granddad was always saying ‘better out than in’ for everything, especially chunder, which is what the saying was invented for in the first place. But he did make one exception, and he had told me many times: it did not apply to the truth, which was ‘better in than out’. That was one of his codes, like ‘finders keepers’. And he lived by it. And now I could see his point plainly. Raffi and I looked at each other, and tried hard to hear, but could catch nothing that made sense, other than strong evidence that Dad was copping it right, left and centre.

  I was not quite sure what Mrs B was upset about: whether it was the fact that Dad went over to see Mum, or the fact that he came back and told Mrs B what they talked about, or whether it was something to do with Mum being pregnant. Maybe it was all of these. I did know that no one ever seemed to be happy about someone getting pregnant, and this looked like another example. I couldn’t get past that point, but at least I knew that the cat was out of the bag, and I could now ask questions about it, which I wasn’t sure about before.